


Glorious

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: No Smut, Pre-Canon, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Victor Trevor - Freeform, sherlock holmes x victor trevor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 14:29:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10923741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: (narrated from Victor Trevor's perspective) Victor makes a new friend on campus after his dog, Gloria, bites the leg of freshman Sherlock Holmes.





	Glorious

**Author's Note:**

> Always loved the idea of Sherlock having a lil buddy in his angsty university days and I think exploring Victor Trevor (outside the context of BBC's weird interpretation) is really interesting. I'm not necessarily sure if this will end up with Vic and Sherl together, but I am so excited to find out! Let me know what you think. Comments = love.

Gloria had gotten out again. Aggravated, exhausted, and supremely annoyed, Victor barreled down the green until he reached a rather isolated walkway.  _ She must have gone this way, there would be no other _ \--Victor’s thoughts were interrupted by a pained scream. He turned the corner and  _ there  _ was his bull-terrier, jaws clenched down on the skinny ankle of a freshman writhing in pain on the ground. “Oh!” Victor shouted, unable to do much more than clap his hands to his mouth in shock. After a moment’s indecision, he knelt and began tugging the dog off the poor student. “Are you alright? I am terribly sorry. Do you need for me to call the nurse?” The boy looked up at Victor, teeth clenched and black curls trembling. Victor could he tell he was trying very hard to remain unemotional about his apparent injury, which was now leaking crimson blood directly into the snow. “I’ll call for the nurse.”

A small army consisting of a random professor, several curious students, two broad-backed seniors carrying a stretcher, and one exasperated-looking nurse trooped down to Victor and the younger student. She spread out her arms to keep them from crowding him. “Clear the way, clear the way. This boy’s got a broken ankle.” The seniors laid the stretcher ceremoniously on the ground and Victor watched in apprehension as the freshman was borne aloft, looking both mortified and pained. “Oh! Oh! I’m so sorry, I’m so,  _ so  _ sorry,” Victor babbled on the way to the medical wing. The boy shivered in the cold, eyelashes fluttering, mouth tensed with misery. “It’ll be alright. Just a broken ankle.” Victor’s heart cried out for the boy. Stupid Gloria! He shot the dog a mean look as she trotted beside him, collar and leash tightly fastened. A girl came up beside him. “Is that  _ your  _ dog?” she said distastefully. “Why, yes. But I never meant for this to happen,” Victor said unhappily. The girl tossed her hair. “You should put that thing down. It could’ve bitten any of us.” A chorus of agreement went up among the assembled crowd. Victor could feel his cheeks heating up. The last thing he needed, the very  _ last  _ thing he needed, was for everyone to hate him more than they already did. 

The next day, immediately after Victor finished eating his breakfast (which he ate alone), he went down to the medical wing to visit the student. The least he could do was bring him some coffee. And not any of the watery stuff they served in the cafeteria, good, hearty coffee, from Victor’s favorite cafe. Gripping an industrial sized cup of dark-roast, he crossed the green and entered the recovery bay, where several people brooded over their various injuries. It was relatively quiet and when Victor entered he could hear how loud his footsteps were. 

Victor walked to the far end of the aisle and pulled aside the blue curtain. And stopped. 

There was something about the student’s face that caught Victor’s attention...so small, and sweet, and innocent, resting against the pristine whiteness of the pillow, the morning winter sun streaming through the window and casting golden planes across his cheek, his fingers twitching in cadence with his dreams. In that moment, even though Victor knew the student couldn’t have been more than seventeen, he seemed but twelve. 

But before Victor could do a more involved study of his subject, the freshman’s opaque green eyes flashed open. “It’s you. Hello,” he gave a little smile, clearly still under the effect of painkillers. “Hi there. I’m Victor Trevor. It was my dog that bit you,” Victor recited awkwardly. He remembered the coffee. “I brought you some coffee from off-campus. I didn’t know what you liked so I just put in a bit of sugar.” The student’s smile broadened. “Sugar is all I take.”

He felt bad disturbing the boy while he was sleeping, so he apologized. “I’m sorry that I woke you. I’ll be off now…” The boy gestured for him to stay, one hand cupped around the coffee in an incredibly easy manner. “No, it’s alright. I’ve been bored out of my mind.” 

His features shuttered, flickered, focused. Suddenly, it was as if he was  _ on.  _

“Sophomore. Studying...oh! Poetry. Literature. Romantic, lonely, and fond of donuts. The cinnamon,” the freshman said apologetically, tapping the corner of his own mouth with his hand. Victor reached up and smudged it from his lips, gaping. “How…?” 

“That’s right, we haven’t done the beginning bit. My name is Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. Pleasure.” His thin hand extended toward Victor, who took it and gave it a firm shake, noting with a slight shiver how cold Sherlock’s fingers were. Sherlock. What a funny name. “How did you know I was a poetry and literature major?” Victor asked. Sherlock sipped at his coffee, eyes brightening at the question. Clearly, Victor had hit upon a topic that Sherlock enjoyed: his own intellect. “The sleeves of your sweater.” Victor looked down at his sweater. It was one of his favorites. Cashmere. Dark blue. “Ink stains, pressed against the fibers. Also, the unmistakable smell of dust and books. No acidic undertone, though, so not a biology major. Your right middle finger also has a bump, indicative of fast writing. Not to mention your glasses. Tortoiseshell? Please,” he finished with an ironically raised eyebrow, “trademark lit major.”

“Marvelous. What about romantic and lonely?” Victor said, rather more breathlessly than was appropriate. “Is there any other type of lit major?” Sherlock responded. They shared a hushed laugh. Victor gingerly lowered himself onto the comforter. “I wanted to apologize for my dog. I should have been with her. If there’s anything I can do to help you, or get you, just let me know.” Sherlock nodded, a genuine look of warmth crossing over his severe features. “Thank you. I suppose that there will be some inquiries at my dorm...students often leave me their unsolved problems, and I try to help them. It’s my way of making money around here. If you could pick them up at some point and deliver them here, I would be quite grateful.” Victor nodded, eagerly. They discussed the details of obtaining the inquiries and then fell silent. Outside, they could hear the beginning frenzied shouts of a snowball match. To Victor’s surprise, Sherlock sighed like a child denied candy. “I so wish to feel the snow. It’s so beautiful, is it not?” he turned his slight, angelic form to Victor, diamond cut lips tilted in a nostalgic expression.

“It is.”

“Why don’t you have a lot of friends?” Sherlock asked. He took another long swallow of coffee, adjusting the pillows behind his back and sitting up straight. “Tall, reasonably handsome, sandy hair, chestnut eyes...why aren’t the girls all breaking down your door?” Victor laughed at his bluntness. “None of them like me. I’m too..odd, as they put it. I never thought I was odd. Maybe I’m shy.” A beat of hesitant silence stretched between them. “And I just never found a way with them, you know? I never found a way to be in. I haven’t been lonely, necessarily, I just don’t go around any particular crowd.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “They’re all stupid. Don’t take it too harshly; difference is frightening, and intelligence is foreign to them,” he said with no small amount of scorn. Perhaps this was why Sherlock was lonely. Or didn’t go around with any particular crowd…

Victor departed with the feeling of having seen something magnificent, like a solar eclipse, or an asteroid crash-landing on Earth. Sherlock was unique and brilliant and almost painfully beautiful, a shimmering, precociously enigmatic star, the kind of student who everyone secretly wanted to be. Disincluding Victor. Victor didn’t want to be Sherlock because then Victor wouldn’t have the pleasure of viewing him, in all of his Gothic moodiness and Victorian melancholy, in all of his wisdom, in all of his youth. 

Later that night, head buried in a haiku textbook, Victor smiled. He wasn’t sure why he was smiling--the haiku he was reading were rather dry, and almost painfully cryptic--but still, a small, glowing, grin was stretched across his face, and  _ damn  _ it felt good. It was pathetic, he knew, to be so excited about a measly freshman with an ego too big for his own head of curls, but yet he was. And he was happy about it. Victor’s mournful, lonely soul, was happy about it, and at the moment, it was enough.

The next day, before visiting his patient, Victor made sure to stop by his dorm (a single, as anticipated to pick up the inquiries. Stepping inside, he was amazed at how gloriously filthy it was. Whereas Victor preferred a general cleanliness, Sherlock clearly didn’t bother with anything resembling basic order. Picking his way over discarded button-ups and several long black socks, Victor stopped at the desk. He debated himself: to snoop or not to snoop? With his so-called “powers of deduction,” Sherlock would probably be able to tell...but then again, it didn’t seem like he was the type to care. Victor leaned down to get a better look at the desk. Coffee stains, tea stains, unnameable stains, newspapers, notebooks, pen ink, eraser shavings, vanilla candle on a ceramic plate, periodic table, photographs of cadavers, magnifying glass, a few blue marbles, sketches...sketches? Victor shifted some of the detritus aside to get a better look. Sherlock identified as a scientist, and the drawings were certainly of a scientific nature, but the hand that drew them was almost disastrously romantic. The best one was of a sort of sea creature, its valves penciled beautifully on the page, so magnificently rich in shading and tone that Victor half-expected it to float off of the page.

He stooped at the “in” tray on the desk and grabbed all of the notices. Good. Done. Victor looked over at Sherlock’s bed and, of course, it was unmade. The grey blanket and white sheets had been crumpled and tossed to where the pillow should be and the pillow furnishing the top of the dresser rather than the bed. It was childish and endearing and Victor made the bed with a feeling of deep satisfaction. As he worked his foot hit upon a shoebox. Thinking--logically--that the box was holding shoes, he picked it up. Unfortunately, Victor had grabbed hold of the wrong side of the box and instead of shoes falling out, a syringe and a packet of white powder toppled to the ground.  _ Heroin.  _ No.  _ No.  _ Victor snatched up the items with shaking hands and put them back into the box. He did not feel angry so much as sad. He imagined what Sherlock did, alone his dorm, beautiful eyes drifting, body seizing from a chemical high. It would be wrong to pour it into a toilet. So Victor didn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> META: Victor's dog, Gloria, is named after the story in which he is first mentioned: "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."


End file.
